


Cat And Mouse

by dragonofdispair



Series: Vampiric Codex [3]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood and Gore, Gen, Vampires, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-05-12 02:09:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19219438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofdispair/pseuds/dragonofdispair
Summary: Lockdown is the consummate hunter, and the scared, sick, frightened mortals beneath Iacon's plates might satisfy his hunger, but they just aren't interesting.





	Cat And Mouse

◇─◇──◇────◇────◇──◇─◇

.

Lockdown didn’t like to call himself a Decepticon. Sure, he’d broken out of the cages with the rest of them, and been driven under the plates with them, but he wasn’t a believer. He was a pragmatist. Vampires weren’t ever going to either rule or live peacefully with their prey. He’d settle for what he had: freedom. Freedom to hunt as he willed.

That’s all a vampire needed after all: to hunt and feed.

So Lockdown took Decepticon patronage in exchange for their captive food. He let others lump him in with them because it was useful to belong to a group, lairing in fortified Decepticon strongholds, instead of being hunted as an unaligned monster.

As someone who was especially good at hunting unaligned monsters, he knew better than most it was better to have a badge than not.

Starscream inspected the latest batch only briefly, then straightened, flicking a wing dismissively. “Very nice,” he said noncommittally. “I’ll take you down to pick out your payment in a bit; in the meantime, I have another job for you.”

Two more Decepticons — Lockdown didn’t know or care about their names — came in and took the first of the cages away. The self-proclaimed bounty hunter had made the mistake of putting his prey all in the same cage only once. He didn’t get paid for dead ferals.

“Another job?” Lockdown asked, in his own noncommittal tones. Hunting ferals was good business. He didn’t know what the Decepticons wanted with live ferals, though there were rumors. Everything from experimentation to daytime guards. Rumors he didn’t care about, as long as he got paid. “Payment first.”

“I will. First, follow me,” Starscream commanded imperiously. Just to make a point — Lockdown was only a Decepticon because they paid him — the bounty hunter hesitated long enough for the seeker to turn back with a glare. But Lockdown wasn’t stupid either. In an outright contest against the second in command of the most powerful group of semi-organized vampires in recorded history, Lockdown was a candle flame next to a raging inferno. So he followed, but he didn’t have to like it.

Once “outside" the old warehouse, Starscream transformed and flew through the eternal night of Iacon’s Underdark.

Lockdown would have really liked the chance to rip Starscream's thrusters off, that's how much he liked following the fragger. Even separated from the sky, Starscream managed to fly with grace, while Lockdown was stuck on the ground. He should have peeled off and just gone someplace else first, but he hadn't been paid yet. Next time no letting the customer start talking about a new job until the last one was done! Not that he’d had a choice this time!

The Decepticons were out in force, stalking the Underdark's residents, while they cowered in their meager shelters. They didn't fight back, like the armies of the surface had. Easy prey. Too bad it wasn't actually the vampiric promised land Megatron had written about in those poems and stories that had circulated among the gladiators.

Lockdown's patience was on the verge of running out when, barely visible ahead of him, Starscream transformed and landed at what looked like a tenement. With a mocking bow, the seeker opened the door and gestured for the bounty hunter to precede him inside. With a fang-bearing snarl, Lockdown did...

Only to stop, armor bristling in a fang-bearing snarl for an entirely different reason. Death.

Holding a cloth over his nose — an affectation that wasn't nearly as effective as choosing not to breathe — Starscream sauntered in and let the door close behind them. Darkness, only slightly more complete inside than it had been outside, was no hindrance to them. Once again, Lockdown was gestured ahead.

Made cautious by the scent of death, the bounty hunter made his way deeper into the tenement. It wasn't long before he came across the first corpses.

Mortals... mortal minions, he amended, scenting the trace of a vampire's claim on them. Not that he could see the telltale marks of the claiming bites on their necks. Both had been ripped entirely open, and their throats were torn out by claws. Looking at the amount of stale energon that had been splattered around them, he couldn't tell if they had just been killed or if one of them had been eaten as well.

But if a vampire had killed these minions, why hadn't their masters responded. Ferals could move around during the day, but this was...

... This was a fast, brutal kill that had prioritized killing the minions over drinking from them, and no feral would have let this much energon go to waste.

He looked back at Starscream, their red optics meeting, and the seeker just gave him a fanged smirk. "Go on then." He waved to the door leading deeper into the apartment building.

Here the strangeness continued. The door was open, forced open by ripping out the lock. NOT by clawing through metal, which, he noticed, had been reinforced to resist a vampire's strength. The metal there was still pristine, as though the assailant hadn't even tried to claw through the door. As though it had known what a lock was, and exactly which part of the wall he needed to destroy to get through with minimal effort. Not all of the gladiators had become Decepticons after the Breakout, but this was the first time Lockdown had seen any of them attack a Decepticon lair…  

Two more slaughtered minions lay beyond. These had gotten their guns out and, Lockdown read in the interrupted lines of bullet holes left in the walls, even shot their attacker. It hadn’t mattered; they’d been slaughtered just the same as the ones in front, and this time Lockdown could clearly see that no effort had been made to drink from them in the patterns of sprayed and pooled energon on the walls and floor. Lockdown could easily imagine a rogue vampire covered in the blood.

But why hadn’t the Decepticons come to investigate the spilled fuel?

Lockdown found his answer in the first apartment. Like the security door, the lock had been ripped away, and he eased the door open. The scent of death hit him again, making him growl. His instincts whispered that there was danger here, in a way that the minions’ deaths hadn’t triggered.

A dead Decepticon laid on what had obviously once been a carefully constructed nest of scraps. Limply staring up at the hidden sky, the vampire’s chest had been brutally ripped open and the spark chamber clawed out and shattered. There was no sign of a struggle or any hint that he had tried to resist his attacker. This had happened during the day, while the vampire was in torpor.

“Close to fifty Decepticons,” Starscream rasped from the hall, “and another twenty mortal guards. It happened during the day, but it’s not your typical vampire hunter kill, is it?”

“No…” Lockdown looked down at the dead Decepticon again. Not shot or stabbed or crushed… Clawed open, with a vampire’s strength and with a vampire’s claws. Not to mention how he just plain couldn’t reconcile the clawed ferocity of how the minions had been killed, or the doors opened, with how mortals fought. Those had been a vampire, one sated enough to ignore fuel over his goal. “This was done by a vampire.” During the day. An under-plate feral, who somehow wasn’t feral.

“This is the third such slaughter since we broke out of the pens,” Starscream informed him primly. “Plus unconfirmed reports of others, on smaller groups who have resisted joining the Decepticons. It’s an outrage. Lord Megatron has finally conceded to devoting some of our resources to getting to the bottom of this.”

“Yeah?” Lockdown tried not to look either terrified or interested. This would be a grand hunt… and a dangerous one. “How much?”

Starscream grinned nastily. “Right now, for a live capture, you may name your price. If you deliver a corpse, or if it starts taking too long, you’ll receive… somewhat less.”

Lockdown’s fangs itched in anticipation of being able to demand any number of captives from the Decepticons… “Well then. I’ll need all the information you have on actual or suspected attacks.”

“Done.”

“And you need to pay me for my last job, fragger.”

Starscream let out a peal of high-pitched laughter.

.

◇─◇──◇────◇────◇──◇─◇

.

He collected his payment, stashed them in his own room in his Decepticon housing building, and couldn’t help but shudder to see the same lack of security here as the converted apartment building he’d just come from. Lovely. Now he was going to have to find a new lair since he sure wasn’t going to feel safe here anymore.

Good thing it was outside even the most generous estimates of that feral’s — his new prey’s — territory. If there was one thing he could count on a feral being, it was (he hoped) territorial.

With that in mind, he visited each of the attack sites, getting a feel for this creature’s territory. No maps of Iacon’s under levels existed, and the space itself was layers upon layers of old buildings built on top of others, but Lockdown had a fairly good sense of distance. And hunting ferals had given him a good sense of how large their territories were.

Sick and dying mortal optics followed his footsteps, wary of the predator. Carvings and paintings invoking Primus’ marked out places where Lockdown couldn’t go. He passed at least one fortress, guarded by a well-armed militia. Everywhere the press of mortal scents, sick and injured and drugged, was almost cloying and it made his mouth water, but he dared not let his guard down while hunting when he suspected he might be passing through a feral’s territory.

Unfortunately — based on the placement of the slaughter sights — either this feral vampire was wandering outside its territory, or maintaining a larger one than average. Right now Lockdown couldn’t say which. An awake, aware, “feral” who was planning its attacks, rather than relying simply on instinct, might be aware enough to wander afield, preemptively attacking Decepticons, rather than waiting for them to set up shop in its territory. Or, an awake, aware, feral was undoubtedly stronger than its neighbors, and thus more than capable of holding a larger territory.

Lockdown did not like ambiguity.

He did not like the sudden itch that his lair wasn’t safe either. As sunrise started creeping closer, but well before it was critical, he started getting the familiar urge to find someplace to pass the day. Unhappy with his own instincts, he went back to his lair. He spent a few kliks pacing, reminding himself that this place was so far outside that “feral’s” territory that it wasn’t a threat to him. But he couldn’t settle. Snarling to himself, he packed up his tools and weapons, slung his captives back onto the cart he’d used to bring them here, and went to find someplace else.

It would take more than the few breems he had left until sunrise to ingratiate himself with another group of Decepticons and lair with them, so he found an empty, looted pawn shop. The walk-in safe was broken and probably dated back to before Nova Prime’s damn weapon, but he was able to wedge it closed from the inside with a crowbar and some wire.

.

◇─◇──◇────◇────◇──◇─◇

.

The bounty hunter stood impassively in the carnage that had been his previous lair, suddenly quite glad he’d allowed his instinct to reign, and moved his lair last night before falling into torpor. Fuel practically dripped from the walls. Wasteful, but that waste demonstrated the attacker’s control: once again, the feral hadn’t stopped or slowed to feed on guards. It had hit fast, brutal, and effective. In and out, leaving only carnage behind. There was no sign of his neighbors’ captives at all; the attacker had taken them, which explained part of how it could afford to be so wasteful. He did not like this, did not like this at all.

Lockdown had underestimated his enemy.

But the feral had not found him and had made its first mistake. Lockdown knew the scents of every vampire, minion, kept mortal, and mechanimal that called that building home, which meant he now had the feral’s scent as well. A sharp scent, a fast, healthy engine, layered in fresh, clean acetone, which he added to his list of oddities.

Hunting instinct, picking up the scent of his prey, told him to track his prey back to its lair now, kill it where it slept, but he knew that was wrong. His prey had proved to be a capable predator in its own right, and if Lockdown didn’t want to find himself becoming prey again, he needed a better, truly secure place to lair and set up shop.

The old locksmith he’d once been offered up a few possibilities even he knew would be archaic now. That should be enough, except this vampire had already proved it would not be deterred by locked doors or walls.

It galled him to even consider the most hated and feared of a vampire’s ancient menaces as an ally, but with the knowledge he had now, the sun might be the only thing that could keep this feral from attacking him after sunrise. Evading the soldiers and guards set up at the doorways and other portals separating above the plate from the world below each morning and night would be tiresome, and there was a risk he’d be discovered by vampire hunters above.

It was a risk he felt he had to take. The alternative was giving up this hunt and staying out of this feral’s claimed territory for as long as it managed to keep this up.

He locked his adversary’s scent in his mind and went back to the pawn shop. He had equipment and captives to move, and a new lair to find.

.

.

.

End  


**Author's Note:**

> Here is a link to the [Vampiric Codex Official Timeline](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uS2EX-d3Npd00EkN2SxOa7010AUFPI0TVqiS2vbnsbQ/edit?usp=sharing).


End file.
